Ruby Slippers

little bags and felted balls

I love making little bags out of leftovers.  This little bag is knitted from wool that I painted with Gaywool dyes and then spun into a single.  It's stuffed with dyed silk hankies.

 

A member of our Sunshine Coast Spinners and Weavers Guild gave me bits and pieces of wool left over from carding and I spun them into a lumpy yarn.  I stuffed it with some of the Nature treasures I store in the bathtub of a spare bathroom.

After a holiday away from needle felting I may be back in the mood.  I had fun making these little balls last night.

the mushroom family comes home

Some years ago I needle felted a family of mushrooms and put them in our Sunshine Coast Spinners and Weavers Guild’s Christmas sale.  They sold, and while I felt happy that they went out into the world, I was also a bit sad to see them go.

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine was in the Thrift store and saw a family of needle felted mushrooms in the display case.  She took a closer look and saw my Ruby Slippers Creations card.  She sweetly bought them for me and presented them to me at our Guild meeting.  I was delighted!

This is very magical.  Where have the mushrooms been all these years and what have they seen?  So far they've been very tight lipped.

 

little book

I love making little books.  Happily I still have the first book I wrote and illustrated when I was seven - a story about our dachshund Siegfried.  This little book here is totally made from fibre and paper dyed with plant materials - mostly French marigolds.

The pages were dyed with onion skins.

more little bags

I love making little bags out of bits of leftover handspun and scaps of cloth.  This is my Summer Sunshine bag, knitted with handspun wool/kid mohair blend during the dark, rainy days of our West Coast winter.

 

A tooth fairy bag bought by one of our guild members for her granddaughter.

 

Another tooth fairy bag.

 

Tooth fairy bags and an amulet bag.

 

Little Christmas bags.

 

short row scarves and little bags

 

 

I always like to have a project of 'mindless' knitting on the go - something I can knit while visiting with friends, waiting for appointments or riding the ferry.  I find that short row scarves are ideal for this - easy but interesting enough so as not to be boring. My first short row scarves were knitted with hand-painted handspun wool using a pattern from issue 01 of Thr3fold. These are the most recent ones, tagged and ready for our Sunshine Coast Spinners and Weavers Guild's Christmas sale this weekend.

 

 

Recently I knitted a helix scarf with handspun.  This is another short row scarf that was featured in the Spring 2011 issue of Spin-off magazine.  The one I knitted is a more ruffled variation sent out by Spinning Daily.

 

 Some little bags that were fun to make for the Christmas table at our sale.